Eco Soundings

Here's one for the Treasury. Eco Soundings commends the world's first "fart tax" to Gordon Brown as a popular farmer-bashing measure that could have wide social appeal. The New Zealand government, aware that almost 50% of its greenhouse gas emissions come from animals' backsides, is to tax them. The farmers, of course, are kicking up a stink.

Energy diverted

Friends of the Earth and others wistfully hoped that President Putin of Russia might use his state visit to Britain to seal the Kyoto treaty, which depends now on Russia's signature if it is ever to come into force. It was not to be. The president chose, rather, to chinwag with the heads of Shell, BP and other energy companies whose products have largely caused the problem that the treaty is designed to eradicate.

Against the grain

What's the betting that Iraq turns to GM crops within a year? Dan Amstutz, the American charged with running the country's agriculture, has been widely criticised by Oxfam - not least because he drafted the World Trade Organisation's Uruguay round, which has ruined so many developing countries. Amstutz plays down his corporate connections (he used to work for giant grain company Cargill), but it seems he's chairman of the board of directors of a new company set up by some of the biggest agribusiness and GM companies in the world - including Cargill and DuPont.

Name of the game

What's in a name? The CPRE, having once been the sensible Council for the Preservation of Rural England and later the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, is now the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Talk about an identity crisis.

Defence mechanism

Meanwhile, can anyone in the WWF (once the World Wildlife Fund, then the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and now just the WWF) explain precisely why a doctor from the Ministry of Defence was present when Michael Meacher and others gave their blood to be analysed for its chemical contents last week?

Is the MoD going to see the results? Is the MoD paying? Does the MoD have an arrangement with the WWF?